A lie detector for social media is being built to try to verify online rumours.

The system will analyse, in real time, whether a posting online is true.

It will also identify whether social media accounts have been created just to spread false information.

The aim is to help organisations, including governments and emergency services, to respond more effectively to events.

The … Read More → "Lie detector on the way to test social media rumours"

Whales are big, but they’re relatively small compared with the great expanses of the oceans. Counting and tracking them can be a challenge, so researchers are turning to eyes in the sky for assistance. A team from the British Antarctic Survey tapped into data from the WorldView-2 satellite, a commercial satellite owned by imaging company DigitalGlobe.

Extremely high-resolution imagery was run through processing software … Read More → "Whale-watching from space totally works"

Centuries after Shakespeare wrote about King Lear’s symptoms, there’s still no perfect way to care for sufferers of dementia and Alzheimer’s. In the Netherlands, however, a radical idea is being tested: Self-contained “villages” where people with dementia shop, cook, and live together—safely.

We, as a population, are aging rapidly. According to … Read More → "An amazing village designed just for people with dementia"

Robots are notoriously horrible at being generalists. The most efficient and effective robots have been purpose-built to do one specific task very, very well. This is why we have Roombas and not Rosies, and it’s why robotic telemedicine platforms look (and let’s be honest here) kind of scary, all things considered.

But, at least part of the reason that humans (as a species) are so successful … Read More → "Don’t worry, Doctor Robonaut is here to help"

It shouldn’t surprise you that we swear way more on Twitter than in real life. As the study points out, one in 13 tweets contains a bad word, which if we consider that a tweet is the rough equivalent of a verbal utterance, means that on average, humans are about twice as likely to swear in their online speech than in the physical world. 1.15 percent of all the language on Twitter is foul, … Read More → "Science reveals everything you’ve ever wondered about cursing on Twitter"

3D Systems, in collaboration with Ekso Bionics, has created a 3D-printed robotic exoskeleton that has restored the ability to walk in a woman paralyzed from the waist down. The Ekso-Suit was trialled and demonstrated by Amanda Boxtel, who was told by her doctor that she’d never walk again after a skiing accident in 1992.
via Gizmag

< … Read More → "Paralyzed woman walks again with 3D-printed robotic exoskeleton"

There’s a lot going on in painter Hieronymus Bosch’s turn of the 16th century-era triptych, “The Garden of Earthly Delights.” Its central and right panels show humans in the eponymous garden and hell respectively. It is, in fact, the hell panel where Bosch’s truly wicked sense of humor shines through in the various ingenious tortures he devised for sinners.

It was on one such torture victim that Amelia, a music student … Read More → "Hear the music a 16th-century artist etched on a man’s butt"

Remember that great episode of The Magic Schoolbus, where the class took a field trip through the human body? This little chip could be as close as we ever need to get to that dream, by providing a real-time 3D view from within the heart and blood vessels.

The device, whipped up by a team at Georgia Tech, packs 56 ultrasound transmitters and 48 receivers … Read More → "This tiny chip could give doctors a 3D view from inside the heart"

In Lapland, where reindeer herds are kept as livestock, yet graze freely most of the year, a new technique is being used to reduce the number of reindeer struck by cars at night. I cannot make the Finnish article translate into English, but according to redditor og_nichander, the antlers are sprayed with a reflective material that only shows up when headlights shine on it, so you won’t see eerie herds … Read More → "Reindeer get reflecting antlers to protect them from cars"

… Read More → "Hand-cranked kinetic sculpture simulates a droplet splashing into water"